How Much is a Million?
"How Much is a Million?" is Episode 5 in Season 14. It originally aired on April 12, 1996. Synopsis As the episode begins, we see many people walking in a big city. Meanwhile, LeVar finds out that over 8 million people live there. He just can't get over such a big number like that. Now, just how many taxis does it take to get all those people around there? LeVar interviews a driver. He asks her how many passengers she has given rides to in a year and in her whole career. She says that she has driven 23,200 trips in her cab in a year. She has been driving for 10 years, which means that she has driven almost a quarter million people. In New York City, there are over 11,700 taxis. Altogether, they drive a total of 273 million trips per year. There are literally millions of people in New York City who walk, take taxis, buses, trains, and subways. Just millions of people! It's sometimes hard to imagine such a huge number like 1,000,000. LeVar asks the viewers how much they think a million is and how it would look like. How do you know when you have a million? You can count or ask an expert just how much a million actually is. In the title book, a math wizard reveals the answer to that brain-tickling question. LeVar loves saying the names of those big, enormous numbers like million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, and so on. Believe it or not, it's easy to know exactly what a million of something would look like. You just have to start with a small number like 10. A poem shows how 10 apples can add up to 100, 1,000, 10,000, 100,000, and 1,000,000 apples by just multiplying each number by 10. It's one thing to imagine what a million of something would look like, but it's another to actually handle a million. At Binney and Smith Factories, where Crayola crayons are made, people know how to do so of something every day. All through the year around the clock, the factory fills with millions of color crayons. They are made up of two ingredients: pigment (which gives them their colors) and paraffin (which gives them their waxy texture). The paraffin is melted and then mixed with the pigment. The hot waxy mixture is then poured into the crayon molds. Sometimes it's poured in by hand. In an 8-hour work day, a factory employee can make up to 92,000 per day. After the crayons are made, the leftover wax is scraped off the tops of the molds and dumped back into the hot mixture so not a bit of it is wasted. A crayon rack can fit up to 512,000. In some parts of the factory, crayons are strictly made by machine power. After the crayons are made, they are taken to the wrapping machine. One of the employees says that she has been wrapping them for 32 years. Every day, she wraps about 180,000 on two machines. Altogether, she has wrapped a total of over 86 million in her career. Finally, the crayons are ready to be packed in boxes. The most that you can find in one box are 96. The 96-crayon box contains several sleeves of them. As soon as the sleeves are filled, they are taken down the line to be boxed. Then all the millions of boxes are ready to be sent all over the world for kids to enjoy coloring with. In total, factories have made a grand total of over 100 billion! Knowing the exact number of something is important, but there are times when an exact number isn't necessary. In those times, you need to know how to estimate. Everybody does so all the time. For example, Giants Stadium in New Jersey knows all about estimation. It can seat over 77,000 football fans. Every game brings in a different number of people. The officials never know the exact number of fans attending each game. They factor the weather, how well the teams are playing, and look at the record of attendances from the year before. Ticket stubs are counted to predict how many fans will attend the game. On cold days, food vendors can sell approximately 1,000 cups of hot chocolate at each stand. The stadium has over 40 food stands, so they can sell about 40,000 cups per game. On warm days, they can sell about 500 pretzels at each stand. That totals up to about 20,000. And how much toilet paper does it take to take care of all those people? The stadium has over 70 bathrooms. The toilet paper rolls are several times bigger than the ones you'd find at home. While you're enjoying the game, the experts behind the scenes know exactly how much of something is needed to feed and take care of thousands of fans. LeVar is in the New York Public Library, where there are over 6 million books in the building alone. He reinstates that there are millions everywhere. Whether there are people in the cities, fish in the sea, or stars in the sky, big numbers may seem unreachable as the latter. Don't be afraid to ask, because there are many ways to count everything that exists in the world...or even out. Review Books *Only One *One Hundred Hungry Ants *How Many Stars in the Sky? Category:Season 14 Category:Episodes